Dawn
by Splintered Star
Summary: Seto Kaiba is facing four a.m. again, but he's not willing to put this job off. He has his duty to do.


(Requested by the fantastic Nenya 85 an embarrassingly long time ago. Kaiba is clearly Not Mine.)

The clock clicks forward, dashing headlong into the future. The quiet tick forms the background of Kaiba's mind, an anchor of sound to keep the silence from spinning out of control, a counterpoint of noise against the tick-tock of the keyboard.

Kaiba barely glances at the clock – four a.m., one of many he's seen this month – before sipping at the cooled mug of coffee at this side. The mug is black, and rarely used – Kaiba dislikes coffee, and has no interest in caffeine. Usually his will is all he needs to stay awake, but as he stares with half-closed eyes at a computer screen that refuses to stop blurring, he's willing to grudgingly concede that he needs support. Just a sip, every now and then, to steady his hands and cover the taste of copper in his mouth.

It's been a long night, even for him, but it's better than nightmares. A moment's concentration turns the tangle of lines on the screen the designs for a custom-made duel disk, Kaiba's personal project for the last six weeks. He doesn't want to let this project go, even as his eyelids struggle to stay open.

Kaiba works like exhaustion is merely momentary grogginess, like it is a demon to be exorcised in the fires of determination. He sips his coffee and focuses on the tick of the clock, holding on that shield of reality to keep the shadows from whispering their temptations and their accusations – the sounds only heard when all other noises have fallen asleep.

Besides, he's heard them all before.

He'd been approached about the project by a bashful young woman, with the guilt of the privileged dripping from every word like oil. But it was a guilt that she used to fuel a fire, a guilt she used to make things better.

A charity auction, she'd said, for war orphans. Her organization was raising money and publicity, and they'd thought, perhaps, he would be willing… she looked resigned, like she expected his response to be no but was asking out of formality.

Gozaburo's face hung unacknowledged in the air, or maybe that was just the afterimage burned into Kaiba's eyes.

Kaiba had nodded, just once, and asked when they needed the item ready.

The woman had blinked, disbelief followed by relief flashing across her eyes. There's no rush, she had gushed, they were just thinking of something like a few autographed cards or even an autographed duel disk…

No, he'd said, turning to face the window, the horizon. He'd make a disk custom, and send them the designs as soon as it was finalized.

As he sketches in the card-bearing wings of his beloved dragon, he has to admit there was never any question of what form this custom duel disk would take.

Kaiba shakes his head and rubs his eyes, annoyance at himself slipping into his expression. If he rests his eyes too long he might drift off, dropping into dreams that aim to remind him of things that need no reminding, forever burned into the front of his mind, so he keeps them open and forces them to focus enough for him to sketch in the other wing of his dragon.

He doesn't need reminding of why he's doing this – doesn't need nightmares of burned corpses and children's faces pockmarked by chemical scars to jolt him into movement. He doesn't need to remember the smell of bacteria cultures or the way Gozaburo had smirked at him when some foreign businessman had complimented the quality of Kaiba Corp.'s weapons.

He doesn't need to be reminded of the deaths he's paying for in order to foot the bill.

He remembers, anyway – the face of one boy flashes across his face, angry and unafraid and Kaiba remembers thinking, good, at least this one will live, at least this one won't crumble – and he remembers how he knew even then that all of the apologies in the world would only be an insult to the pain he'd caused, that he had blasted so deep a hole that no effort would ever fill it again.

Once he had thought that meant there was no point to trying, no reason to fight the darkness, but he doesn't plan to let himself off with that excuse again. He can't make it right, but that's no reason to not make it better, to pay the bill in whatever way he can. For the sake of those dead and wounded, and for the sake of his own penance. No excuses. Never again.

Even though the hours drag on and the clock ticks towards five a.m., even though the shadows whisper that it doesn't matter, that nothing he can do will make the slightest bit of difference because all he can do is destroy... It's not Gozaburo's voice that visits him at these hours – it's the voices of a million slaughtered children, their voices blurring together and smearing into a dark-red cacophony of pain.

Kaiba glances down at his shaking hands. Bloodstains flickered in and out of his mind's perception even in the daytime, but during these shadowed hours he's always half-surprised he doesn't leave stains on his keyboard.

Then he looks back up at this new form of his beautiful dragon – something that held shards of his soul as much as anything else he had ever created. A tribute, even one few would understand, and a gravestone, the only one some would ever receive. A small penance for his crimes, but that's no excuse.

Another glance at his hands, and then a swig of coffee.

He can last until dawn.


End file.
